The use of IP multicast is an increasingly common method of Internet data transmission. Through IP multicast transmission, such applications as audio and videoconferencing, broad software distribution, multimedia broadcasts and dissemination of financial market data can be accomplished more easily than through an IP unicast.
Because of the increasing use of IP multicast, it is desirable to trace and record the distribution of data packets to multicast groups. One common format for recording this type of data is in a multicast traffic matrix. A multicast traffic matrix can be used to easily summarize such data. Generation of such a matrix, however, presents computation and scaling difficulties.